Saturday, May 30, 2009

While I was impressed with London, I wasn't so much with our tour. We only were allowed to get out of our bus one time so most of my pictures were taken from a bus window. The thing that got us the most is it was the one sunny day of the year! It was so gorgeous outside and we would have really like to been able to get out more. However, the little experience I did get in London was great! I've never met such a polite group of people. Perhaps it was the accent?

Gotta love London's double decker bus system.This is Parliment... again taken from a bus window as we flew by. :(I LOVE their red telephone booths!Big Ben! The Eye. It would have been cool to ride this.Here were some of the London homes. How cute and quaint they are!The driveway to Windsor castle.

One fact I learned about Cork is that the city used to be in water, much like Venice. As we drove around you could still see signs directing people to park their boats beside the house. They later on filled in many of the canals with roads, but there were still many canals left to see!

Here we are at the Blarney Castle where you get "luck" if you kiss the Blarney stone!

I made Brad go first. It was scary! You hang upside down and you can see the world below. I almost peed my pants!They say the Blarney stone is peed on every day. I don't know if I believe that but after looking at this photo I do see some stainage going on.The view below.So beautiful!Irish doughnuts are my "favourite."So, everywhere we went sold raincoats. It rains a lot! We learned the hard way by forgetting our umbrella. So, we splurged a little on an Irish raincoat for Miles WITH matching boots! Cute, huh?I seem to be collecting pictures of myself in foreign telephone booths. So here's one for the UK!

We're home from our UK cruise and had a wonderful time! Ireland is absolutly gorgeous and I really hope we can visit one day again. I have to say it was so refreshing being in a English speaking country, although Ireland's official language is Gaelic. Our first stop was in Dublin and if I had to describe Ireland in two words, I would say sheep and green.

One thing I was absolutely shocked to learn was that just 30 years ago, Ireland was a 3rd world country! They were so poor. It wasn't until they joined the European Union that they finally became a wealthy country. I guess Guinness and potatoes only get you so far!

Here are some pics from Dublin...

Ireland is known for it's Guiness which they make in Dublin. They export a billion gallons of Guiness a year. I've heard the beer is actually quite nasty but the tour we went on gave everyone a free drink. How bad was it that I ordered a diet coke instead? Haha. Brad and our friend Trent took the plunge and tried some. "Not bad," they said.Even though everyone in Ireland speaks English, Gaelic is still the national language. I found it interesting since I didn't hear a single person speak it there. Interesting though!This is Brad and I on our balcony. We had the hardest time getting a decent picture of us so we just used the reflection. We saw so many dolphins on this cruise! It was so neat! We would be on our balcony sipping coffee and they would swim right beside us!

Ok, you can't go to Ireland and not see some riverdance. These dancers were everywhere! In the street and at restaurants. Very neat! I wish they would have taught us a few steps.

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Today we jogged over to castle Solitude which is really not a castle at all. It was built in the 1700's and was made for a place of quiet, reflection and solitude (hence the name). It's only about 10 kilometers from our house so we made a Saturday out of it and had a great time.

Miles LOVES to blow out the dandelions .All gone!Here's the outside of Schloss Solitude.So, this is our attempt at a family photo. As you can see Miles is biting me. Our days of having a smily baby who loves to have his photo taken are over!

Oh and I almost forgot to tell you about our funny encounter. As we were walking through some of the trails we encountered a bunch of drunk German guys. One was all decked out-- he was carrying a fake baby to his chest and had on a pink cowboy hat and PAPER pants. He asked me to sign his pants! After a couple minutes we learned it was a bachelor party and they had all these goals like how many girls could he get to sign his pants, etc. They had stayed in the woods that night and were on their way home (at 4pm) still drunk as skunks. The Germans sure have funny traditions. They were very nice though and of course spoke some English. I am always impressed at how multi-lingual Europeans are.

Monday, May 11, 2009

We went downtown yesterday with some friends and enjoyed a traditional German meal for Mother's Day! This is my friend Alissa. We decided to go German all the way- beer and all. That is about all I could drink of it! Haha!

Miles was running all around with a German sausage in each hand. It was so funny. He constantly had his mouth stuffed with sausage.Here are the guys. They are stuffed. The Brickey's kids were helping keep Miles entertained. Keeping a 19 month old in his seat the whole meal is NOT possible when you are outside!We were in the city of Sindelfingen. Such a cute little town!

About Me

We're a military family living in Germany. We're on the homestretch of our tour here and have loved this experience! It will be bittersweet when it comes time to move home but we sure do miss the USA and the family and friends that reside in it.
We've been married for 5 years now and have a 3 year old son, Miles. Hopefully it's in God's plan to have 1 more!